The present invention relates to food service equipment items. More particularly, the invention relates to a network topology specifically adapted for command, control and information communication within and between food service equipment items and between food service equipment items and one or more external application platforms.
It is becoming more common in the food service equipment industries to create equipment by interconnecting a set of peripherals to a central computer, such as a microcontroller, through the use of a master-slave network architecture. In the past, the central computer monitors and controls the peripherals associated with the particular system, and may, among other things, collect data relating to the system environment and use.
Unfortunately, the typical master-slave type architecture most commonly used in the food service industries imposes that there be only one master and many slaves, and further imposes that a slave may only be connected to a single master. This prevents the various equipment items employing this architecture from being interconnected such that they may share common resources. Because, however, a common ice making and transport system my provide ice to a cluster of beverage dispensers, it is desirable to connect the beverage dispensers and the ice system through the master-slave network. Due to the previously mentioned limitations of the typical master-slave architecture, this is not possible.
It is also becoming more common in the food service equipment industries to provide a method for providing remote monitoring, reconfiguration and control of individual pieces of equipment. Because such applications normally require redundant and special purpose hardware to support remote monitoring, reconfiguration and control and due to the time required to establish a connection between remote sites and individual pieces of equipment, it has not previously been economically feasible to connect such equipment items to a larger, wide area network, such as the Internet.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to improve over the prior art by providing a method whereby only single connection may be utilized to establish connectivity between the food service establishment and the outside world. Further, it is an object of the present invention to provide connectivity in a manner that requires less hardware to connect the various pieces of food service related equipment contained in that establishment. Finally, it is yet another object of the present invention to allow the multiple master-slave networks of these various pieces of food service equipment to be connected to each other in logical groupings such that they may then share the resources of common peripherals.
In accordance with the foregoing objects, the present inventionxe2x80x94a network topology for communication within and between food service equipment itemsxe2x80x94generally comprises one or more food service equipment items, each having a controller and at least one functional subsystem configured as a slave to the controller, and a master interface and a bus slave interface associated with each controller. Each master interface is adapted for electrical communication over an intra-equipment communication channel with a slave interface associated with the functional subsystem. Each bus slave interface is adapted for communication, external to the food service equipment item, over an inter-equipment communication channel. As a critical aspect of the present invention, in order to enable broad networkability between equipment items, each bus slave interface is substantially electrically identical to each slave interface.
Finally, many other features, objects and advantages of the present invention will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the relevant arts, especially in light of the foregoing discussions and the following drawings, exemplary detailed description and appended claims.